Not only the Europeans. An astonishing number of Mars missions fail. The Martians will only allow one mission at a time--and then only those they approve of--the rest they destroy with their death rays.

Surely it can't be too expensive to simply fit the probes with tinfoil hats?

I am rooting like crazy for the Mars project. The problems of establishing a human colony and keeping it alive can be overcome given current technology and the pace of advancement in the various necessary fields. The issue is making it cheap enough to get it there, which is not progressing fast enough for the given deadline.

I guess I am biased - Elon Musk is an utterly single-minded, even possessed, visionary. Just one example is his journey to overcome the problems with production of the economical Tesla model. He is pursuing an ecologically sane solution for our transport problems and tackling the issues step by step, on a scale that boggles my tiny mind.

The man has more brains than he can use. He is interesting to watch from a personality profile point of view, hubby thinks he's bonkers but I think he is one of those ADHD labled kids, everything is possible and needs to be tried, he is just fortunate to have the money to pursue it....